Jefferson's War Page 9
War Secretary Henry Knox was a former artillery officer who had learned all that he knew about naval affairs from Plutarch’s Lives. Now suddenly in charge of building a navy from scratch, he picked the brains of shipbuilders, businessmen, ship captains, and congressmen, and a vision of a fleet of “super frigates” began to take shape in his mind. The ships, Knox concluded, “should combine such qualities of strength, durability, swiftness of sailing, and force, as to render them equal, if not superior, to any frigate belonging to any of the European Powers.” Given the job of designing the frigates and seeing them built was the esteemed shipbuilder Joshua Humphreys, who had designed the Continental Navy’s 24-gun frigates at the age of twenty-four. Humphreys, who would become known as “the father of the U.S. Navy,” was to be assisted by thirty-year-old Josiah Fox, who would transform Humphreys’s ideas into blueprints that would guide the shipwrights in their work. Fox, a wealthy Englishman, had been traveling in America scouting timber for his family’s shipyard when his extraordinary talent caught the attention of Knox and Humphreys. He enthusiastically accepted the challenge of helping build a navy from the ground up. Curiously, both Humphreys and Fox were Quakers.
Knox, Humphreys, and Fox were determined to build the best frigates in the world. Since the United States couldn’t afford to match the imposing men-of-war of the first-rate European powers—mammoth two- and three-deck fighting ships with 64 guns or more—they reasoned that it was better to build ships swift enough to get out of their way, yet packing enough firepower to whip anything lesser. With only France possessing frigates in any number among the European powers, the United States could distinguish itself by building frigates unequaled anywhere in speed and firepower. Humphreys rhapsodized to Senator Robert Morris of Pennsylvania that the frigates “in blowing weather would be an overmatch for double-deck ships” and in light weather would be able to evade them. “No ship under sixty-four now afloat, but what must submit to them.”
A decade had passed since the United States could claim to have a navy, but even during the Revolution, its warships were outclassed, outgunned, and outcaptained. They had contributed little to the war’s outcome. Except for John Paul Jones’s stunning victory over the Serapis, and few other wartime exploits, the Continental Navy had performed dismally. It had been launched with two armed merchant ships, two brigs, and a sloop, its crews filled out by press gangs. They sailed under the Grand Union flag, a knockoff of the British flag, until Congress adopted the Stars and Stripes in June 1777. The cobbled-together fleet and the small frigates Humphreys had designed all were sunk or captured—all but one of the thirty-five—while the British lost only five ships. At Yorktown, it was the French fleet that sealed off Chesapeake Bay. The last Continental warship, the Alliance, had been auctioned for $26,000 on August 5, 1785.
Knox parceled out the frigate—building among six shipyards from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to Norfolk, Virginia—an early pork-barrel project benefiting the coastal states. He overconfidently predicted the frigates would be completed by the end of 1795, underestimating the time needed by years. But the delays and cost overruns were of his own making. First, while spreading the work among six shipyards might have been politically shrewd, it complicated the logistics of bringing together all the materials to make a ship. Then Knox also made the frigates bigger, displacing 300 tons more than the ships Congress had authorized. Finally, he had insisted they be framed in live oak—not the typical white oak—because ships made of tough, durable live oak would last at least half a century instead of the usual dozen years or so. But that meant work crews would have to be sent to the sweltering Georgia Sea Islands to harvest the live oak. Malaria decimated them, and white replacement workers couldn’t be found to brave the intense heat, humidity, fever, snakes, and bugs. Black slaves cut the live oak.
Humphreys and Fox first drew up blueprints for the three 44-gun frigates they intended to build: the Constitution, President, and United States. The other three warships would be smaller, 36-gun frigates: the Constellation, Chesapeake, and Congress. The Constitution , “Old Ironsides,” built at 1,576 tons in Boston—and anchored there today, still a commissioned naval vessel—was built by Colonel George Claghorn, a Revolutionary War veteran, at Edmund Hartt’s Boston shipyard, using Humphreys’s design. Humphreys personally oversaw construction in Philadelphia of the United States, the first completed frigate, in July 1797. Forman Cheesman supervised the building of the President in New York. The Congress was built in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and the Constellation, in Baltimore, by David Stoddert, under the watchful eye of Captain Thomas Truxtun, one of the early Navy’s warriors who would bring the ship credit during the Quasi-War with France in the late 1790s. The unlucky Chesapeake, being built in Norfolk, was destined to be memorably surrendered twice: by Captain James Barron to the HMS Leopard in 1807, and six years later by Captain James Lawrence to the HMS Shannon, despite Lawrence’s dying words to his crew: “Don’t give up the ship.”
The frigate builders looked across the Atlantic for inspiration, to France’s powerful fleet. Not able to afford a navy like England’s, the French, too, had chosen to build large frigates because they were cheaper and faster than the towering, heavily armed ships of the line with their three gundecks. Like the French ships, the American “super frigates” were copper-bottomed and on their two gundecks carried long guns that fired solid shot. Carronades were mounted on the spar deck, for clearing enemy decks with shrapnel. The long guns were standard on warships everywhere. Solid shot’s chief purpose was smashing holes in enemy hulls and killing enemy gunners. A crude measure of cannon caliber was the weight of the shot that it fired; there were 36-pounders, 24-pounders, 18-pounders, 12-pounders, 9-pounders, and 6-pounders. The carronade was relatively new, named for the foundry in Carron, Scotland, that designed it in 1779. It was a light, maneuverable, short-barreled gun that could fire a large round or belch a cloud of wicked projectiles—nails, chain, odd metal bits—that eviscerated anyone in its path, or could shred an enemy’s sails, leaving him dead in the water.
Copper bottoms repelled barnacles, increasing ship speed, and also made it unnecessary to “careen” the vessel—tip it on its side—every six months or so to scrape off barnacles and repair holes bored by toredo worms. The British Royal Navy sheathed all its warship bottoms in copper, starting with a crash program in 1778.
While they were built upon the French model, the frigates’ operations followed the Royal Navy’s worthy example. Americans copied English shipboard organization, discipline, and all manner of daily operations, down to the rum ration. The 44-gun super frigates were crewed by 356 seamen, and the 36-gun ships by 306 sailors. They enlisted for 12 months. Able-bodied seamen were paid $14 a month, and ordinary seamen received $10. While they earned less than merchant seamen, the sailors could share in booty during wartime. The typical American seaman was twenty-two. Often, he was English. Nearly half of the sailors came from the cities—at a time when America was only 5 percent urban. Each day, they stood at least one of the five four-hour watches and two two-hour watches. They spent long hours scrubbing decks and brightwork, whitewashing ceiling planking, repairing rigging, patching small boats, and practicing gunnery.
There were rules for practically everything, and harsh consequences for breaking them. For serious infractions, miscreants were slapped in irons, put on bread-and-water rations—and, mostly, punished with the cat-o‘-nine-tails. Less draconian punishments were meted out for lighter offenses. Quitting watch before relief arrived was punishable by three hours on the “spanker boom” and no rum ration for three days. Jutting over the ship’s stern, the spanker could be a sickeningly rough ride in stormy weather.
David Humphreys and Joel Barlow opened negotiations with Algiers in 1795 as the frigate navy slowly came together. Humphreys and Barlow were former Yale classmates, Revolutionary War veterans, and, strangely enough, poets. Before becoming a diplomat and minister to Portugal, Humphreys had served as George Washington’s secretary dur
ing the war and commanded a Connecticut regiment that in 1786 helped suppress Shays’s Rebellion, a rural uprising over Massachusetts taxes. Barlow, who fought alongside Washington at Long Island, was a well-known literary and social figure. A third negotiator, Joseph Donaldson, Jr., worked alongside Barlow under Humphreys’s direction. James Leander Cathcart, a prisoner since the Maria was captured in 1785 and the dey’s secretary, served as mediator and translator.
The dey opened the parley by announcing that a treaty and ransom would cost the United States $2,247,000 cash and two frigates worth roughly $248,000. America could well afford it, the dey said, for hadn’t a Spanish newspaper reported that U.S. exports totaled $28 million a year? Donaldson and Barlow hastened to assure the dey that was a gross exaggeration. Further meetings brought the price down. On December 22, 1794, Algiers and America struck a deal: $642,500 cash—about $10 million in today’s dollars—for the captives’ release; $21,600 worth of powder, shot, oak planking, and masts in annual tribute. The Americans sweetened the agreement by throwing in a 36-gun frigate, which would be called the Crescent. Thirty-four captives had died, but Algiers required ransom for them, too, although their bodies were not shipped home. Barlow borrowed the cash at high interest from Miciah Bacri, the dey’s chief moneylender; Bacri simply drew the money from the national treasury and redeposited it. The eighty-five surviving prisoners shipped out on the unfittingly named Fortune, owned by Bacri.
The Fortune was one of the unluckiest freedom ships that ever sailed. No sooner had it left Algiers and entered the Mediterranean than plague erupted on board. It carried off Samuel Bayley, Foss’s old captain on the Polly, leaving only four of the nine original Polly crewmen alive. The ship was placed in quarantine for eighty days in Marseilles, where the captives marked time until the plague had run its course and they were cleared to go ashore. Embarking again for Leghorn, Italy, the Fortune was stopped and boarded by the British, who robbed the captives of their clothing and money and claimed the ship for a prize. Barlow bitterly complained that the Fortune sailed under an American flag, and England could not simply appropriate U.S. property without cause; the British replied that the ship was Algerian, and they could do as they pleased. On top of everything else, Barlow later had to pay Bacri $40,000 for his ship.
Foss and some of the other captives transferred to another ship embarking for America that was even more ill-starred than the Fortune. A Spanish privateer captured her. After she was cleared in Barcelona, she was captured by a French privateer and released, seized by the British, and then by Spanish privateers again. Another Spanish privateer boarded her and stole all the provisions and clothing. After being captured and released once more by the British, the cursed ship finally reached America.
The Algerian treaty encouraged American diplomats to open negotiations with the other Barbary States. Hassan, momentarily pleased with the ransom and tribute he had gotten, helpfully supplied the American negotiators with supporting letters and cash advances. Moroccan Emperor Maulay Sulaiman, Sidi Muhammed’s successor, quickly reratified the 1786 treaty after accepting a $20,000 gift. Tunis’s treaty, signed in August 1797 for $107,000, contained no annual tribute, but required periodic gifts. Tripoli signed in January 1797 for $56,486 and no annual tribute. This agreement would begin to act on Bashaw Yusuf Karamanli like a sharp pebble in a shoe when he learned what Algiers and Tunis had gotten.
The diplomats shuttled back to Algiers, which was threatening war again because the promised naval stores were long overdue. Envoys placated the dey by announcing the United States would give him another 36-gun frigate. He was so happy that he placed orders for two more new American ships, promising cash on delivery. Peace might be at hand, but the United States had just spent nearly $1 million to secure it.
And it was just the beginning.
V
“WILL NOTHING ROUSE MY COUNTRY?”
There is but one language which can be held to these people, and this is terror.
—William Eaton, U.S. consul to Tunis
The Senate ratified the Algerian treaty on March 2, 1796, and on March 15 President Washington unhappily pointed out to Congress that the Naval Establishment Act obliged him to stop work on the frigates. The prospect of a work stoppage concerned him, he confessed, for “the loss which the public would incur might be considerable, from the dissipation of workmen, from certain works or operations being suddenly dropped or left unfinished and from the derangement in the whole system.” By that, he meant the ironworks, shipyards, lumberyards, and foundries employed in frigate building. Its loss might not “comport with the public interest.” Another reason for Washington’s discomfiture was that every penny of the budgeted $688,888 already had been sunk into the frigates, plus another $400,000 in overruns. If the frigate building were aborted with no issue, it would be $1 million wasted. Seeing the point, the Senate overrode the act’s work-stoppage stipulation, authorizing completion of two 44-gun frigates and one 36-gun frigate—the United States, the Constitution, and the Constellation.
A new threat arose—France, upset over the Jay Treaty negotiated with England in 1794. It angered France for what it did, and Republicans in America for what it didn’t do.
Former Foreign Secretary John Jay had attempted to persuade the British to reopen the West Indies to unrestricted American trade—reprising Adams’s 1780s mission. Many American commodities still were barred from West Indies ports, and no American ships were permitted to dock. The Jay Treaty’s major achievement was obtaining most-favored-nation status for American ships trading in Britain, but it failed to loosen up West Indies trade and amazingly conceded to the British the right to seize U.S. goods bound for France. This wasn’t a case of a bumpkin getting fleeced by slick London operators, but a shrewd bet by Washington and his advisers that when the half century of intermittent warfare between England and France ended—whenever that might be—England would be left standing, and not France. Also factored into their thinking was the feeling that America would have to fight England again one day, but that America’s chances of surviving the British onslaught would improve with time; the Jay Treaty pushed back the inevitable war two decades. Knowing that the Republicans would be furious over Jay’s yielding to the English over France, the Washington administration withheld the treaty’s details from Congress. It wasn’t until February 29, 1796, that the administration held its breath and grudgingly released the full treaty. Republicans exploded, accusing Federalists of appeasing America’s old enemy.
France denounced the treaty, claiming it violated the Franco—American alliance forged in 1778 at the height of the Revolutionary War. The French retaliated by adopting the same stance toward American goods bound for Britain that the Jay Treaty granted Britain in regard to France. French privateers began seizing U.S. merchantmen in the West Indies. In just one year, France captured more than 300 U.S. vessels.
Taking office in March 1797 as the second president, John Adams had never disputed the wisdom of creating a U.S. Navy in his exchange of views with Jefferson the decade before. He had agreed with Jefferson that standing up to the Barbary States “would be a good occasion to begin a navy.” But with the Treasury empty and full of misgivings about the American will to wage a distant foreign war, he had advised paying tribute. Now that the United States had money and the beginnings of a navy, he aimed to use both in the nation’s defense against France. “A naval power, next to the militia, is the natural defense of the United States,” he told Congress on May 16, 1797, but “the establishment of a permanent system of naval defense ... can not be formed so speedily and extensively as the present crisis demands.” He asked Congress to give him authority to arm merchantmen, to ready the three new super frigates for sea duty, and to allocate funds to build more warships.
Congress promptly granted him the authority to expand the Navy and disbursed $392,512 for this purpose in March 1798, as the ignominious details of the “XYZ Affair” began leaking out, fanning animosity toward France to fever pitch. Elbrid
ge Gerry, John Marshall, and Charles C. Pinckney, sent to Paris on a peace mission, had met three minor French officials—identified by Adams in subsequent reports only as agents X, Y, and Z. The French envoys haughtily announced negotiations were possible only if their foreign minister, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, received a $250,000 gift and the United States loaned France $10 million. Pinckney’s forceful reply, “No, no, not a sixpence,” was inflated in the retelling into the ringing “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute,” which became the national rallying cry of the day. Not long afterward, a French privateer sank a British ship in Charleston harbor, a flagrant violation of neutrality.
By the time Adams finally laid all the details of the XYZ Affair before the Federalist-controlled Congress, legislators were ready to act. Congress’s pent-up hostility toward France over the 300 ship captures and the XYZ Affair burst forth in a torrent of legislation to stem the Jacobin threat. It changed the U.S. military and began America’s transformation into a naval power. Congress created a Navy Department; authorized construction of twelve 22-gun ships, ten small vessels, and cannon foundries; approved twelve more ships of 20—24 guns each; suspended commerce with France and authorized seizure of French privateers “hovering” off the U.S. coast; sanctioned completion of the last of the original six frigates, the President, Congress, and Chesapeake; and authorized Adams to accept up to twenty-four warships built with money raised from the public during subscription drives. The drives were enormously successful, tapping into the rabid anti-French sentiment predominant in most areas. The Navy acquired the frigates Essex from Essex County, Massachusetts, the John Adams from Charleston, and the Philadelphia and the New York from the cities for which they were named. As an exclamation point to this flood of martial legislation, Congress created the U.S. Marine Corps on July 11, 1798. It was a second act for America’s “soldiers of the sea,” whose training and hierarchy mirrored the British Marines, crack shipboard and assault troops first organized in 1664. During the Revolutionary War, Continental Marines—perhaps 50 officers and 2,000 enlisted men altogether—had served on American warships through 1784, but they disbanded along with the rest of the Continental military establishment. Today, the Marine Corps observes as its birthday the date of the Continental Marine Corps’ establishment: November 10, 1775.